Last week, I had the pleasure to attend Bluewolf’s Annual Offsite Workshop (OSW) in Whistler, Canada. Once a year, Bluewolf's leadership brings together the vast majority of our consulting organization to focus an entire week on professional development and building internal culture. 

This year, we focused our efforts on delivering against the new strategic imperatives of building employee and customer engagement. OSW is just one example of how Bluewolf is employee-obsessed, and as a result, Bluewolf employees are highly engaged, which was illustrated throughout the four-day workshop. If you ask me, this is what is driving Bluewolf’s success—highly engaged employees that are enthusiastically involved in their jobs, who genuinely care about Bluewolf and our clients. The Bluewolf Pack will always go the extra mile for our customers—not only do we want to understand our customers, but we want to know our customers’ customers. Without doubt, employee-obsession drives customer-obsession. 

One of my favorite parts of OSW was the Women Innovators Network (WIN) luncheon. WIN, founded in 2010, is a community that highlights and promotes women as innovators. The Women Innovators Network celebrates, encourages, and supports female leaders, at all levels, and across all departments, who are driving business success.

Bluewolfers from all levels of the organization gathered to hear Corinne Sklar, Jolene Chan & Sue Goble, thought leaders at Bluewolf, talk about their professional and personal development, the challenges they faced, and how they got to where they are. Key takeaways included:

1. The Positive Side of Fear — As Corinne Sklar put it, “There’s a real power in feeling fearful. Find the challenge that makes your gut wrench, and look for ways to break through. That’s what will ultimately enable you to grow”. 
2. Develop a Personal Board of Directors — Find a group of professional advocates. Whether female or male, mentors can be very influential in career development. Sheryl Sandberg writes about this in her new book, Lean In. She believes that mentorship is important and crucial for career progression, but the repeated message has led women to ask virtual strangers, "Will you be my mentor?" Sandberg says, "I believe we have sent the wrong message to young women. We need to stop telling them, "Get a mentor and you will excel." Instead, we need to tell them, "Excel and you will get a mentor.” The relationship is more important than the label.
3. Be Passionate — Bring passion to your job everyday. Have meaning in your work, but also allow yourself the time and energy to indulge in personal passions as well. Without external passions, achieving work/life balance is impossible—and ultimately productivity, energy, and drive will suffer.

Every person at the WIN Luncheon at OSW felt a renewed effort and commitment to engage with our clients and extend the power of these events in the coming months. As we continue to focus as a company on customer-obsession, there is no doubt that initiatives like WIN and events like OSW are driving employee engagement and, ultimately, customer engagement.

An important tenet of WIN is to celebrate not only internal women leaders, but female leaders in our client community. Stay tuned to future WIN events by joining the WIN community on Facebook and LinkedIn.